Existing techniques provide for the distribution of written content and audio content. Many of these techniques fail to either accommodate the needs of the reader/listener, and/or provide limited value to the content providers.
The Internet offers, numerous sources to satisfy the market need along the attribute dimension of written content; print publishers' primary basis of competition with each other and their primary differentiator relative to television and radio. Publishers in the print media industry have sought to address the disruptive impact of the Internet by either enhancing the attributes of their content, e.g. subscriber customization and/or more analysis, or reducing price to improve circulation. Fundamentally, written content publishers are confronted with a problem of allowing the reader to effectively manage his or her time because the reader must then dedicate all attention and focus to reading the distributed content. For example, many professionals must decide how to best manage their time, either dedicate time to reading time sensitive content or attending to client work.
Thus, there continues to be disruption in the print media industry as a result of the commoditizing impact of the Internet, and limitations to the effectiveness of consuming print content because subscribers have to read it.
Professionals in a variety of dynamic industries have a need for certain types of timely trade information necessary in order to conduct their jobs or deliver their services to clients. The severe opportunity cost of accessing content can be inefficient and overly time consuming for a professional. Professionals have sought to balance the need for staying current with the high opportunity cost of reading relevant content by accessing information in an audio format.
However, current audio content distribution techniques such as news oriented podcasts do not solve this problem because they are lengthy in nature, typically covering multiple topics on the same file all of which may not be relevant to the listener, and usually have less frequent or irregular circulation. Similarly, podcasts that take an in-depth look at a certain topic, are not germane to breaking news or information. Moreover, podcasts require a fair amount of user intervention and preparation, including the active download of a podcast, queuing the podcast up for listening and then having to listen through extraneous content to find the pertinent information, e.g. a 5 minute section in a 30 minute podcast. Similarly, podcasts are severely restricted such that a content provider is unable to track the user's interaction with the content, being unable to see if the user actually listened to the content.
Additionally, with print media, there is a need for techniques to convert the content into audio format. One such technique is available from the website Audio.com, where authors and narrators can be paired up. This service provides for a general means for finding a narrator for an author's work, where the narrator is determined based on various factors, including costs to narrate the content. This model however, is related to longer content, such as novels, short stories, etc that is not time-sensitive. Another technique, which could be used for time sensitive content, is computer-generated audio narration. Such techniques however, are extremely non-user friendly and often difficult for the listener, as the computer-generated narration misses various nuances of the article content, including pronunciation, word emphasis, and pauses by way of example. Therefore, human narrations are strongly preferred for user value.
With many working professionals, the value of the content is not only in its ability to be easily consumed, but also in the timeliness. Many professionals are better served with the quick receipt of time-sensitive information, wherein the nature of existing media distribution models do not readily lend to distributing this time sensitive material.
Thus, there exists a need for an improved method and system for generating audio content, distributing said content and moreover tracking the effectiveness of the content.